Digital university certificates: Lübeck initiative revolutionizes the conclusion!

Digital university certificates: Lübeck initiative revolutionizes the conclusion!

Lübeck, Deutschland - In Schleswig-Holstein, the path to digitization of university certificates is paved. Experts of the Institute for Interactive Systems (ISY) of the Technical University of Lübeck have developed an innovative system in cooperation with the HIS University Information System eG that enables universities to exhibit digital, machine-readable and verifiable bachelor and master certificates. This new system not only shows the entire production process of digital university certificates, but should also support their future use.

The implementation and their goals

The focus was on three main goals: First, the falsification and flexibility of the digital certificates should be guaranteed. Secondly, a uniform standardization is important in order to ensure the comparability and machine -readable edition of the certificates, which is essential for future crime procedures. Third, these certificates should be available for mobile and between various systems, such as campus management software and digital wallets. The Europass, an instrument introduced by the European Union, also serves to promote the mobility of educational evidence and create transparency.

At the beginning, only two central bodies were responsible for processing these standardized digital certificates: "Mein Bildungsraum" in Germany and the European solution "Europass". For the Wallet from "Mein Bildungsraum", a function in the Hisinone system was implemented, which enables a PDF document together with a machine-readable XML attachment in XHochschule format. In addition, an interface to the Europass Wallet was drawn up based on the modern and structured data format JSON-LD. This offers more flexibility and enables more effective presentation of the certificates in target systems.

Andreas Wittke notes that the technical implementation was complex because standards and interfaces were constantly evolving during the project period. However, he underlines that the effort has been worthwhile that all universities that use theirs are now able to exhibit secure digital bachelor and master products with applicable seals and signatures. The Hisinone system is a comprehensive campus management system that manages all processes around the life cycle of a student.

A look into the future

Wittke describes his vision that future certificates are more likely to be built as portfolios, which reflect learning results and skills at different levels. This requires competence -oriented module descriptions that are recorded in module manual books. This information could go beyond the limits of traditional evidence and could be important for crediting or applications to meet the appropriate requirements at the workplace.

The pilot project for digitization of university certificates is funded by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, as part of the digitization program II, financed by Corona-Nothilfe. The project runs from October 1st, 2022 to 31.07.2024 and pursues the goal of creating a marketable product (Minimum Viable Product, MVP), which illustrates the generation of digital university certificates up to its practical use. Wittke is optimistic that digital university certificates can be feasible, but emphasizes that there is still a lot of work to do to implement the vision into reality. In addition, it is important that more and more universities and institutions use this technology to fully exploit the extensive benefits of digitization.

For a clear insight into the project, the team has published a sample video that is available on the video platform YouTube.

For more information on this project, see the current reporting on www.lifepr.de .